Nursing homes and hospitals have begun using pre-packaged prescription medications in an effort to alleviate errors in the dispensing of the medication. A medication in pill form may be packaged in strips or sheets, from which a desired dosage can be selectively detached. The nurse who provides the medication to the patient thus removes the appropriate number of pills on a per patient per day basis from the strip or sheet and hand delivers the pills to the patient. The pre-packaged dispensing eliminates the step of counting the pills out of bottles or containers, which tend to look alike and can be easily confused. Further, the pre-packaged dispensing reduces dosing errors by ensuring that the pills provided have the correct strength.
The pre-packaged dispensing of the medications also provides more accountability and less chance for inadvertent or intentional diversion of the medications. The multiple-pill strips or sheets can, for example, be individually identified and inventoried. Further, pills can not be readily stolen or misdirected in small amounts that might otherwise go undetected.
For the same reasons, namely, to reduce errors in the selection of medications to fill prescriptions and to reduce loss and/or theft of medication, commercial pharmacies have begun using automated pill dispensers. The pills are delivered to the machine by the manufacturers in machine-accessible canisters. For each prescription, the pill dispensing machine selects the appropriate canister, counts out the pills and then dispenses the pills to the pharmacist. The pills may, for example, be dispensed into a conventional pill bottle or other receptacle. The pharmacist then prints out a label that includes prescription-related information, such as the prescription number, the medication name, instructions for taking the medication and so forth and attaches the label to the bottle. The medication is then available for pick-up by the prescription holder. The pharmacist does not otherwise have access to the pills and thus cannot inadvertently select the wrong pills, miscount the pills or intentionally divert pills.
Automated pill dispensers solve some but not all of the problems associated with the filling of prescriptions in commercial pharmacies. One continuing problem is persuading the patients to bring the prescriptions to the pharmacy for filling in the first place. Patients may be reluctant to fill prescriptions or to take certain medications for various reasons, such as cost, embarrassment, and so forth. Elderly patients may have difficulty in actually getting to the pharmacy because of disabilities and/or difficulty in arranging transportation. Also, patients may have difficulty in determining or managing when to re-fill a given prescription. The problems are compounded if a patient is taking multiple medications that may have different re-fill dates, and so forth.
Certain prescription medications may be ordered through mail order companies, which use third party delivery services to provide home delivery of the medications. The doctors or the patients contact a given mail order company and initiate the prescription filling process. The mail order company verifies the prescription, as appropriate, dispenses the medication, packages the medication for shipping and provides the packages to a local office of the third party delivery service. The delivery service then transports the packages by air, truck or rail to various delivery offices that are local to the patients and the local offices then deliver the packages to the patients' homes.
The mail ordering of the medication solves certain problems associated with, for example, the inability of patients to travel to the pharmacy to pick up the medications. However, the mail ordering of the medications increases the cost of obtaining the medication by adding thereto the third party delivery expenses. Further, the mail ordering adds complexity to the process of providing the medication by adding steps in which the medication is handled by people at the mail order company and people at the various offices of the delivery service. Each handling step increases the chances that medication may be lost, or inadvertently or intentionally diverted.
Further, the mail ordering of the medication from the mail ordering company eliminates any personal interaction between the patient and a local pharmacist. Thus, the patient may not be adequately advised about how the medication should be taken, side effects to watch for, and so forth. Accordingly, the patient may experience problems associated with the improper handling of the medication, or a failure to react to particular side effects of the medication.
Other problems are associated with having the relatively large quantities of medication, i.e., months worth of pills, at a user's discretion. If the pills command a high street price, for example, the user may sell some or all of the pills and thus chance the worsening of the malady to which the pills are directed. Further, the medication may, in the quantity provided be toxic. Thus, children or forgetful adults may end up poisoning themselves. Accordingly, what is needed is a system for delivering medication that is efficient, accurate and priced per delivery to allow for frequent re-filling deliveries.